Primary health care availability largely shapes people's satisfaction with healthcare in general

More than 1.15 billion visits are registered annually in the primary health care system in Russia. The volumes of primary health care are many times higher than specialized, emergency and other types of medical care, so it is important to ensure availability for people at this stage.

On January 26, RIH experts held a training webinar “Effective organization of medical appointments” as part of the Federal Project “Incident No. 38” implementation. During online webinar, the pilot project results, which was implemented in 2023 on behalf of Mikhail Murashko, the Minister of Health of Russia, in 52 regions of the Russian Federation, were reported.

The total and competitive number of slots in the schedule for 14 specialties, appointment to which is most in demand, increased 4.5 times in a number of regions. The total number of patients who made an appointment with a doctor increased 4 times, and the number of those who successfully made an appointment via Public Services Portal increased six-fold.

Getting an appointment with a doctor has become much easier. With the same human and infrastructural resources, it was possible to increase capacity of Russian polyclinics. In this regard, in January 2024, Mikhail Murashko instructed to extend the pilot project to all other regions of Russia (except Moscow and four new regions of Russia).

“RIH experts together with colleagues from the National Medical Research Center for Therapy and Preventive Medicine of the Ministry of Health of Russia will continue to work with the regions both remotely and personally visiting medical organizations to teach their colleagues how to control health care availability and maintain it at the appropriate level”, said Olga Kobyakova, RIH Director.

As part of the online seminar, presentations were made by Oksana Burdova, chief physician of the city hospital of Lysvensk city district, Perm region, and Konstantin Bidzhoev, chief physician of Murmansk city polyclinics No. 1 and No. 2, who, using the example of their organizations, demonstrated positive changes after recommendations introduction of on doctor's appointments.